‘The English Experience’

Standing just beyond the security checks as I headed home through Stuttgart airport last week was a very cute young lady, in a neat uniform of short grey skirt and pale blue polo top. She held a sign aloft for all to see – ‘The English Experience’. Every few minutes, lost-looking teenage girls wandered up to her, and were pointed towards the ever-growing group where they made their introductions.

Little, I thought, did they realise the nature of the ‘experience’ that lay ahead of them when they reached our green, pleasant and ever-so-wet lands. For this was to be a little more than the simple language course that they’d envisaged. Their parents had paid out the extortionate fees knowing that their time in England was to be as much about discipline as it would be about language.

The girls would be staying in dorms at a fine public school, deep in some rural valley. There’d be a group meeting that first evening, at which they were introduced to the school’s more senior masters, who had given up their summer holidays to supervise the ‘experience’. The rules for the month ahead would be explained; the strictness of the regime would leave many shocked.

And then the girls who’d been observed sneaking away at the airport to head for the bar or the glass-fronted ‘smoking zone’ would find themselves called to the front, where they’d be lectured, and publicly caned in front of the group.

The following morning, they’d each be called in turn into Housemasterial studies. A folder would be taken out containing reports from their school and parents; a lengthy discussion about their conduct would follow. There’d be tears, and apologies, and vows to do better – even before they’d been told to bend over and touch their toes…